


mapping my body with your atlas touch

by avid_reader1



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:05:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5435801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avid_reader1/pseuds/avid_reader1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s reminded why he left. He couldn’t take the storm in his belly. He couldn’t bear the way it devoured him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mapping my body with your atlas touch

It’s a bar, but a shitty one, barely lives up to its name. The harsh light of the OPEN sign washes the wet pavement pink, garish and over-bright, stinging his eyes a little. It's a familiar sight. He can’t breathe, suddenly. 

The door handle is grimy and he uses it as an anchor, to keep his breath form flying away from him. Pushing it open, he’s overwhelmed by the smell of peanuts and beer, and it’s like he’s home. Like he never really left.

 _Fucking hell_ , his heart whispers. He tells it to shut up. Soldiers on. 

He squares his shoulders, puts one foot in front of the other like he’s someone with his shit together, and lifts his eyes to that irresistible head of blonde hair, fiddling with napkins the way he does when he’s nervous. It’s not like it is in the books, with butterflies and heart flutters and sunlight washing through him. It’s a fucking hurricane hitting him deep in his stomach. It’s a tornado consuming each corner of his brain. 

“Fuck,” Patroclus snaps out harshly, pushing his hand deep in his hair. He’s reminded why he left. He couldn’t take the storm in his belly. He couldn’t bear the way it devoured him.

Suddenly, the blonde head lifts and their eyes meet. 

It-

It’s-

It’s a culmination of every moment in Patroclus’ dreams within the five years they’ve been apart. It’s the slam of phantom lips on his lonely ones, the tangling of far-away limbs and hands pressing deep into his hair without a touch. It’s every fucking nightmare that Patroclus had; that he’ll fall to his feet just with the touch of his gaze on his skin; that he’ll drop to his knees and kiss his ankles and be forever grateful just to touch him. He freezes, shoulders squared like a courageous idiot, one foot in front of the other. He feels pinned. 

(He feels like he’s soaring because he’s _here_ , in front of him, chest rising in falling with steady breaths, blonde hair in beautiful halo against the ugly lighting, green eyes seeking his out, like maybe he’s missed him too, like maybe this half decade felt like half of his soul was ripped out _too_ )

“Patroclus,” Achilles breathes. And he crumbles.

Like putty in his hands. Patroclus closes his eyes against Achilles’ perfection burned into his retinas. 

Typical.

-

Achilles had ordered for him. Patroclus chews methodically on the burger, gamey and tough as it was all those years ago, and it steadies him. He can feel Achilles’ eyes on him as he eats, but he keeps his eyes trained on his beer bottle, sweating into his hand. 

He could barely handle five seconds of eye contact. He dreaded to wonder what five minutes would do to his composure. 

Achilles clears his throat and he barely resists the impulse to look up. “Pat.” A pause. “Patroclus.”

The silence feels expectant. Patroclus lets out a litany of curses in his head as he slowly lifts his head. It’s a Herculean effort. “Achilles.”

“How-how are you?” 

It feels like a different question. “Good.”

“Good. That-that’s great.” He can practically hear him gathering his thoughts, brushing dust off of conversation starters and gathering icebreakers into his hands. It’s painful that there’s so much distance between them. It’s painful that it was their choice. 

“Are you--with anyone?”

Patroclus is so taken aback that he can’t help but snap, “Jesus, Achilles, I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

He regrets is a soon as he sees the flinch bloom on Achilles’ whole body. He was always like this; a walking, talking open nerve, always willing to bare himself completely, always willing to hand others the knife with a guileless smile. How many people have scarred him, Patroclus thinks distantly, without me to protect him?

But he can’t take back the words, because he needs to control this situation however best he could, and if it was required of him to hurt Achilles to make him let go… He would do anything to protect him. Especially from his own idiocy. 

Achilles schools his expression into one of determination, surprising Patroclus. “I didn’t ask you to come here so we could hurt each other. I just wanted to ask you one last question. Will you--let me, Pat?”

The nickname burns him, and he curls his lips cruelly. “Go ahead.”

“Why did you leave? What did I do?” Achilles eyes are like hot pokers on his skin, searing him from the outside in. It's like the bar rises in temperature by a ten-fold, and Patroclus feels like he needs to remind his heart to beat. “How did I wrong you so badly that you left me? Please. Please tell me.”

Patrolcus gives up on air. He can’t do this. There is a reason he didn’t want to come back. He can’t do this, he thinks with panicked breaths filling his chest rapidly, pushing himself out of his seat with trembling arms. He can’t face Achilles like nothing happened, like they’re normal, like they’re as they were. Patroclus pushes out the door, his hand slipping on the grimy door handle. He ignores Achilles calling his name after him with increasing desperation. 

A hand catches his wrist and he heaves out a sob that feels like gravel scraping against his throat. He’s always so weak. He’s always been so weak. Always such a disappointment to himself, because he leans into the touch. 

“Patroclus, please,” and he can taste Achilles’ tears in the air.

He spins around, furious and spitting with it. “What more do you want from me, Achilles? You’ve already taken my heart. You've taken _everything_. You’ve taken the bits of my soul that I loved, you have burned me dry. You have exhausted my capacity to love. I’m scared to keep loving you because it feels like death sentence. It feels like diving into the sun head-first with a smile on my face. It’s terrifying.”

He uses the moment of Achilles astonishment to break from his hand, running as fast as the pain in his chest would let him. But Achilles has always been faster than him and there is a hand on his shoulder not long after, spinning him around. 

“You left me, you stupid fuck!” Achilles shouts, green eyes ablaze like an angry god, beautiful and deadly. “I told myself that I couldn’t live without you, that if you ever left I’d surely die. I abandoned my family to be with you, because I could see that Thetis was hurting you, and I thought, “he is the most important part of me, I cannot let this happen”. I lived off your laugh and your smiles and your kindness. If loving me was like jumping into the sun, loving you was swimming to the depths of the ocean. And it was intoxicating as it was terrifying but I never once thought about leaving you because I would rather drown than breathe without you.”

Their harsh breaths tangle in the silence, eyes locked together like puzzle pieces. And Patroclus falls, because he always does. 

The touch of Achilles’ lips is the achingly perfect dichotomy of icy heat, unyielding softness. It was irresistible force meets immovable object and he’s never liked clichés but the feels of his teeth along Patroclus’ bottom lip feels more like breathing than anything he’s done in five years. Achilles' bottom lip yields underneath his teeth, and the slide of his tongue on the roof of Achilles' mouth is delicious. He feels a steady burn of passion is making its way along his spine, sending paths of goosebumps across his skin. Patroclus can't help but shudder inside the lock of his arms around him. He thought he'd never get to have this again. It takes his breath away that he can, that he does. He's thanking his stars, sending up every prayer his brain can manage to every god while Achilles laves his tongue along Patroclus' lip.

They break away with aching reluctance. Achilles brushes Patroclus’ hair away from his eyes with breath-taking vulnerability. 

“We’re not complete without each other, Pat,” he whispers in his tender voice that could bring deities to their knees. “Don’t break us ‘cause you’re scared.”  


Patroclus only clutches at him, breathing slow and steady. 

He is home.

**Author's Note:**

> Be kind, leave comments, kudos and love. Thanks for reading :)


End file.
